School Board Workshop & Business Meetings 10/16/2025

001Good evening and welcome to the Scarborough Board of Education workshop. The date is Thursday, October 16th, 2025. Ray, can we call the attendance please? Ms. Jacobs? Here. Mr. Kelleher? I'm thinking he might be a little late. Ms. Lindstrom? Here. Mr. Rockstar? Here. Ms. Charpenian? Here. Ms. Trapini-Huff? Oh, she, I think, is going to be late. Yeah, she's going to be a few minutes late. Thank you. Ms. Ruskina? Here. And Ms. Claret? She's ill. All right. If everyone would please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Great. I'm going to struggle to get signed in, but you should be here. Perfect. All right, agenda item

0024.0 is new business and 4.1 is a legislative update with Scarborough's elected officials. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for coming. I was thinking that it might make sense as we start to maybe introduce ourselves and we ensure. Anything exciting that you'd like to share about yourselves and anything exciting about you that you would like to share? I can get started. I'm Shannon Lindstrom. I am the school board chair. I've lived in Scarborough for going on nine years now. So I moved here from the D.C. area. I have a husband, four kids, three cats. I live off of Pine Point and tells you where I am. I think that's me in a nutshell. I'll probably think of something else as we go on. Another fun fact, but that's what I got so

003far. Your favorite copywriter? Yes. I'm Fela Turpinian. I'm the vice chair of the Board of Ed. I'm trying to remember what about myself. I've been a subscriber for about five, six years. I came out of Wyndham prior to that. And I have two children in the school district that are eight and ten. I'm Charlotte Jacobs. I joined the board this past June. I've lived in Scarborough and attended Scarborough schools K through 12. I live over on the Payne Road area. I have two kids in the district. Good evening, folks. I'm Drew Gatine, State Representative, District 126. District 126 is actually contained. It's just a part of Scarborough, also a part of Westbrook and a part of Saco. I live in the Westbrook part of the district. I'm happy to be joining you tonight. I am

004in my sixth term in the main house. not consecutive because I had to step away for a couple of years because of term limits. Currently, I serve as the House Chair of the Appropriations Committee, which has jurisdiction over the state budget. Hello, I'm Kelly Murphy. I represent House District 125, which is a strange little strip from Broad Turn down Route 1 and Payne Road. This is my second session in the legislature. So it's my third year. I'm the house chair of the education and cultural affairs committee. I was six years on that side of the table as a school board member. I went through Scarborough schools. My husband did, our kids did. They've all graduated now and I am happy to be back in the room. And I just want to take the moment to

005say my deepest condolences for the loss of J-PRA. Thank you. We, my family known for a long time, back when he was a student teacher, he was my kid's golf instructor and that's such they're 24. Now they were in middle school then. Even then on the golf cart whizzing around the golf course, he was quizzing the kids about current events and social studies. And he wasn't even a full teacher yet. And then they all ended up having him as a social studies teacher in seventh grade, which was amazing. So we're very sorry for that loss. And I know it's been a. tremendous loss for the district and its colleagues and students. I'm Anne Carney. I serve in the Maine Senate. My district is District 29. And so that includes South Portland, Cape Elizabeth, and some

006Scarborough, basically north of Pleasant Hill Road and then east of Route 77 until you get to Scarborough Beach. And I served one term in the House of Representatives and was on the Labor and Housing Committee. I then moved to the Senate and have served as the Senate Chair of the Judiciary Committee for the last, going into my sixth year in that role. I also have served on the Environment and Natural Resources Committee and the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee. I like to have something outdoorsy in my legislative world. And I, let's see, I reside in Cape Elizabeth. My kids went to Cape Elizabeth Public Schools from... the time they were in kindergarten until they graduated from high school. And I'm really happy to be here with you to meet all of you. I know Frey

007from some of my legislative work. It's good to see you. Hi, I'm Abby. I'm currently one of the student representatives on the school board and I'm currently a senior. I'm Jillian. I am in my second term on the school board. I live on the west side of Scarborough and I have four kids in the district, ranging from nine to 15. My name is Mitchell Rockenstier. I've been serving on the board. This is my first term. I've lived in Scarborough for 22 years. Some would say my whole life. Ray Grogan, assistant superintendent. Majority of my educational career, my kids all went to three-point schools. This is my second year here as assistant superintendent in Scarborough. I'm Diane Netto. I'm the superintendent here in Scarborough. I joined Scarborough in 2017. When I first came to the district,

008I was middle school principal. And then I moved on to become assistant superintendent, and this is my second year as superintendent of schools. And prior to being in Scarborough, I spent... 14 years as a building leader and then 11 years as an elementary education teacher. So pretty well vested in Maine education at this point in time. John, can you hear us? Well, the question is what I can find. Yeah, are you able to? John is... John, we were just introducing ourselves. Did you want to introduce yourself quickly? We can't hear you. John is ill, so he's done us all a favor and kept his germs. Well, I will, I, what I know about John is John, um, he's in a second term on the school board. He was, um, born and raised here in Scarborough

009and left for a short period. And, um, he likes to tell the story that when he married his wife, he insisted they come back here to raise their kids. And, um, that's, that's when he, he came back. He has two kids in the district. One is middle school still, right? And one is high school. I think they're both. Are they both in high school now? Yeah. John, I'm hoping you're maybe his son is in high school. Yes. Maybe they're both in high school now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The eighth grade recognition ceremony. Yes. Yes. They're both in high school. I'm a freshman now. Well, thank you for joining us. This is I know that we've been over the years talking about how we can open up the lines of communication a little bit more and

010talk about things that. From our perspective, what we think might be impacting Scarborough residents and hear from you what you think is coming and what your interests and focus are on so that we can kind of get some ideas to what any information that we can help provide. So that's our purpose in doing this today. I know that from our perspective, we had talked about potentially everybody thinking of some things they wanted to. To talk about, but before we do that, is there anything that you're interested in sharing with us that, you know, it could be coming down the pike? Abby, I just want to say one quick thing. We have another student rep who is also sick. We have a lot of germs going around. It's that time of the year, right? And so

011Abby is our senior school board rep, and she participated last year in what's called a extended learning opportunity, an ELO. And it's a new one for Scarborough. It's a local government ELO. And so she, in her first year, I mentored her, and she started our student recognition spotlight program. So she and Grace worked on that a lot last year. And now Sarah, who is not here, is involved in our ELO program again. So it's definitely, it's an exciting opportunity for them. They get to learn the inner workings of local government and both of them. Abby was really heavily involved when we really considered the cell phone policy. And I know it's something that you have. talked pretty extensively about. And so she was really able to share with us a student perspective on that. And

012so I definitely invite you to participate today too in things that we're talking about. So, but I can turn it over to you first, if that feels good and you can share with us anything that you're interested, anything coming up, anything you know that we should know. Oh, the list is long. So I can just, I'll speak for the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. We have a lot of, when we get back in January, we're going to be dealing with a lot of potential structural changes in school funding, the EPF funding formula in particular. We have had It came out of the previous legislature, the study, the Maine Education Policy Research Institute that works out of USM and University of Maine at Orono. And they work with the legislature and it's amazing the stuff that

013they come up with and they do research for us and come back with reports. And one of their big tasks this last session was. to study the EPS funding formula and to see, compare us to other states and how do other states fund education? How are we doing in Maine? Is it equitable? And so on. And so we've had a preliminary report back from them about some of the potential changes that they think might work for us. And they're going to come back after doing some modeling in January. So we can really see what would happen if we went down a path or two. I can tell you some of the things that they're thinking of is adding if perhaps an indicator for relative income in a community. So right now, EPS is basically. predicated

014on for the most part property values in our community there are some other little bits here and there with special ed and english language learners and things like that but talking about communities on the coast that have traditionally had a lower income base since covid their property values have skyrocketed and so their funding from the state has gone down as a result. And so those communities in particular are struggling. And I know that Scarborough is often believed to have a very high relative income, but we do have a lot of hidden poverty in Scarborough. So that could be something that affects us as well. And including another possibility would be to have basically a student poverty element to EPS funding formula. So these are all just some potential things that MEPRI is looking at for

015us and they're going to model out. And so that's a big deal. We also have the governor's study commission on school construction, which I know is obviously very special and important to this committee right now. And again, those are longer term things that won't help, hopefully, in Scarborough because it's... past this time. But you know, just I don't know if everyone saw the story in the paper. We have 600 schools in Maine, 500 need major reconstruction or total demolition and start over. Schools average from 1950 and so it will take 11 billion dollars to fix that problem over several years obviously we don't have a look do we have 11 billion dollars drew just kept away so that's another big big thing that we're going to be looking at when we get back in january

016we need a new revenue source is the bottom line for that. And so looking at ways we can try to find additional funds for education across the state. And another just high level thing is main learning results. The DOE is looking at how those are structured and kind of doing a broad. assessment of what's in the learning results right now, if things should be shifted around, importance on some things and not others. And again, that's going to come back to us in January. So we don't have a huge bill load when we go back. We cleared almost 200 bills in the last session, but we are going to have a lot of these very big structural things to look at. And pre-K is also another thing that will be in front of us. So that's

017what's going on in my neighborhood. More tangential. So, as I mentioned, I serve on the Appropriations Committee and, unlike my friends on the Judiciary Committee and the Education Committee that always have many, many, many bills in front of them every year, we basically spend most of our time on the Appropriations Committee working on one bill, which is the state budget. We do the bond bills also. And everything that Kelly just talked about really, in a way, just... you know touches the work that my that my committee does um uh when you look at maine's state budget um and you you were looking at it as a pie chart and you and there are these pie charts do exist you've probably seen them um you know a very very large piece of the pie uh funds

018education um you know about 35 40 percent and then another 35, 40% funds the services that are provided through the Department of Health and Human Services and all of the rest of state government is funded by the rest of it. So the money that we... invest as Mainers into healthcare and the money that we invest in Mainers into K-12 education and also the university system is an awful lot of the focus of what the Appropriations Committee does. And again, as Kelly alluded to, you know, at a very, very high level, the goal that we've been told to meet by voters is to fund 55% of the costs of K-12. And for many years, Maine struggled to meet that goal. And several years ago, we actually hit it for the first time. And I think that's

019something that is very positive. And I think we're committed to continuing. to provide that funding. But what that means is that as costs go up, and folks know a lot more about the cost going up, it means every budget cycle, we have to come up with tens of millions of dollars in new money just to keep up with the commitment that we made to 55%. And then as you folks know very well, 55% is not a district by district. You know, it's distributed, as Kelly said, according to a formula. And, you know, I think there are a lot of points of view about whether that formula is unfair or fair or mostly fair. It needs some tweaks. And that perspective obviously can be based upon where you sit and what district you're in. But I

020do think that it's good. As the state changes, as there's more and more pressure put on property tax owners, as our state ages, that we continue to look at the formula and evaluate it and make sure that it's fair. Honestly and frankly, like changing the formula can be, if you're not changing the overall amount of money going in, changing the formula can be challenging because... Doing something here means maybe doing something less somewhere else. And in a legislature where we all are very mindful of the needs of our constituents, navigating those things can be kind of tricky. But I'm glad to hear that there's this very honest conversation going on and a lot of the information is being gathered. And again, you know, the other big funding issue for schools, as Kelly already alluded to,

021is the construction costs. You know, we were, I was on the Westbrook City Council when we made the list and the state told us they were going to fund a brand new middle school in our community. And, you know, it felt like you won the lottery. Yes, you are. We built that school 14 years ago for... 23 million dollars. And when you look at what schools are costing, and you know, you've probably been there because we have a farming arts center. When you look at both what the individual construction costs are for renovations and the building of new schools, and then when you look across the entire state and see what the needs are, it's a very, very difficult problem. Something that we've tried to solve. You know, when we've had strong revenues, when we've

022had the ability to do some bonding, you know, there are a number of ways to figure this out. But ultimately, I think we need to come up with just an overall better solution that involves some sustainable funding. Zooming back even further, you know, in a bigger picture, you know, Maine has benefited. over the last several years of having very strong revenues and revenue growth, which has, again, allowed us to be commitments to things like 55% and the commitments that we've made for healthcare and to invest in legal services and invest in our university system. And even though we've gone through this period of strong revenues, we've never to make these investments. Childcare, as we talked about. you know, there are still a lot of unmet needs and we are definitely sort of in a situation

023now where Even though our economy has a lot of strength and resiliency in it, we are not seeing the straight up revenue growth that we saw over several budget cycles. And we're also facing an awful lot of uncertainty coming out of the federal government, which has a big impact in our state budget. And up in Augusta, we're going to be talking about that a little bit tomorrow. And as we roll into the session. So, you know, we hear the word uncertainty a lot. And when you're dealing with finance and budgets, uncertainty is usually not a good thing. It isn't uncertainty that could lead to a lot of upside. A lot of the uncertainty, you know, could potentially present more challenges to us. So these are the things we're dealing with at Ben Augusta when we

024go into the next session. Well, I'm glad that you've built your school first with state funds because we had the same architect 10 years ago for Wentworth and we tripped off. Well, if you go into our Wentworth school, you'll see a lot. We don't have the tree, but we've got a lot going on. Again, that was just 10 years ago and we came in $3 million under budget and I think it was like $37 million to build one farm. So everything, the cost of everything obviously is skyrocketed. Yeah, to give you some perspective now, we're asking the voters to approve $129 million to renovate and add on to the two of the three K-2 schools, a brand new school for one of the sites and then a very small... I call it a Lego, a

025very small addition onto Wentworth and then a middle school. Yeah. So, um, addition. So it is, it's, it's quite expensive. You see single school projects in the state of Maine now over a hundred billion dollars. Yeah. And it's, again, it's really just the cost of construction and, uh, you know, what it takes to get this done. Yeah. So I'll start by talking a little bit about school construction because The town of Cape Elizabeth just recently went through a really difficult struggle with funding a new middle school project. And also in Senate District 29, the city of South Portland just opened up a brand new, really beautiful, modern educational institution for their middle school. And one of my pieces of legislation is a bond bill that would... fund a different mechanism for funding schools so that

026you weren't either winning the lottery or losing the lottery. There was more of a kind of a matching fund kind of approach. And that's in concept form. It's not very fleshed out because we're going to be working with the Appropriations Committee, hopefully, when it comes time to talk about bonds and what we might be able to accomplish to design that program. If you can't hear me, I'm just getting over a cold. I'm no longer contagious, but just let me know and I'll put on a louder voice. So with my judiciary chair hat on, I want to talk about some of the big projects that we have lined up for the second session that. touch to some extent on education and impact lives, I think, of your students in particular in certain ways. So the first

027is data privacy. That's something that we've been working on. Right now, Maine doesn't really have any data privacy protection. And we've been studying a lot of different models and considering the extent to which they either maintain the status quo, which is essentially that the people who gather the data, the companies that gather data, really set. their own policies and then the law basically just requires them to comply with their policies versus Some other states like California and Maryland and increasingly Connecticut are turning to policies where the state sets certain thresholds or foundations of privacy that have to be respected. And the company's policies have fit within those state guidelines about what can and can't be bought and sold. And so we've been looking at that second kind of policy for about three years now. And

028we think we have a really great piece of legislation to consider in the winter when we come back together. It will be based on the Maryland legislation, which has now been in effect for about six months. That will, I think, impact you and your students in certain ways. Where you'll see changes is... how much data can be collected about minors. So data privacy has typically only focused on very young children. And now the trend is to protect anybody under the age of 18. So there may be changes in the technology that you use here in school with regard to how minors log in, what information they're required to provide, who's able to track the usage that students... engage in at school, that sort of thing. And one of the things I'll say is, you know,

029I think we are really blessed to have the technology director that we have, and she is very conservative, and student data privacy is absolutely first and foremost in mind whenever we take a look at any application that teachers might want to use, like we have a very strict application. policy so teachers don't get to just self-select what they want to try out or utilize in their classroom with students. And Jen looks really closely at all of those data privacy agreements with every vendor and we have said no to lots of application requests that many other districts readily use and make available to their students because we feel like student data privacy is such a strong responsibility that we have. Well, that's really heartening to hear because it's something that we're really concerned about. I know

030that there was a school in another part of the state that was going to use biometrics to sign students in and out of school during the school day. And that's, you know, that's just not a safe policy for anyone. So that's one big thing that we're tackling. Something else that we spent more time on in the prior session, but has to do with doxing of minors. And you probably read multiple different national and Maine stories about the harm that's caused by doxing minors. It is a really good, well-written law, and I think it will protect children from being doxed by adults. And so it's something that we're really proud of our work in that area. The Judiciary Committee. Covers a lot of different things, human rights, civil rights, constitutional rights, as well as civil and

031criminal court matters. But one thing that we're particularly interested and engaged in has to do with the rights of children and the rights of emerging adults. And so a lot of the work that we do on medical issues and on things like doxing are really focused on how we can ensure that as young people are. entering their adulthood as they're 16, 17, and then become 18, that they are given the appropriate level of independence and autonomy regarding decision-making in their lives. Maine has really good laws in that regard. We've been able to continue to keep those in place and then to also strengthen some of them. The third area that I work in that I think really affects schools is gun safety legislation. And this year we spent most of our energy trying to push

032back on laws that would loosen gun safety legislation here in Maine. Maine's laws are not particularly strong in that area. there were things that would have compromised public safety's ability to protect Mainers from gun violence that we were able to stop from happening. We do have some other legislation that, you know, we hope will be moving forward involving ghost guns, but that's a little up in the air right now. Ghost? Yeah, what's a ghost gun? What's a ghost gun? Okay, I was gonna, I spent way too much time thinking about that. So I'm glad to hear that you don't and that you don't know what they are. So a ghost gun is a gun that is primarily or partially constructed of materials that can be made either at home or acquired with a 3D printer

033or acquired on the internet from various vendors. The way the gun is put together evades the requirement that the gun be serialized. And so serialization of guns, having a serial number on them, is really important to law enforcement because that's how they investigate crimes. That's how they find out where the source of the gun that was used in the robbery or whatever. was. And making ghost guns is becoming a business here in Maine. And so that is a way of requiring those guns to be serialized, just like every other gun, primarily so that law enforcement can, when they, and they're very inexpensive, when they are used in crimes, that those crimes can be investigated like other crimes. I'll just conclude by talking a little bit about youth engagement, which isn't really a legislative issue, but

034it's something I really care a lot about. We have a lot of visitors come to the state house for different reasons. I especially love having students come and shadow me for a day or even for a week. In Cape Elizabeth's school system, seniors spend two weeks shadowing different people in different professions just to learn about some new profession that they might be interested in. And last year, I had four job shadows over the course of two weeks. each of them a week long. But I also regularly welcome students. in my volunteer work and also just to come with me if there's a day off from school. And in addition, the legislature has this really nice program called the Honorary Page Program, where any student can come and sit right next to the Speaker of the

035House or the President of the Senate and deliver messages that legislators right during the course of deliberations on the House or Senate floor. It's a really wonderful experience. And I would just, as a bit of a public service announcement, encourage you and your teachers to consider that. And then also to let students know that they can just reach out on their own to whoever they're elected officials and ask for the opportunity to come for a half day or a day or whatever period of time. to shadow their representative. You learn a lot and you really see kind of the inside scoop of what's going on. Everything from, you know, how do you overcome a really strong disagreement that's about to explode into an argument to where are the snacks hidden in the judiciary office? It's

036really pretty, it's a pretty amazing experience. I just encourage people to get in touch with one of us or whoever your rep or senator is and ask for that opportunity if you're interested. And I'm really good at finding snacks. I'm trying to figure out, you know, something off the screen, but if you want to help, I say yes. Yeah. Actually, I think our three committees are especially good at snacking and stuff. We're here a long time. Additionally, another way for students to get involved, we often have students come testify in the education committee because a lot of our bills personally pertain, like Abby and cell phones. This year it was LD 1234, which is like the one I can remember off the top of my head because we have 2100 bills and they don't all

037stick in my brain, but that one did. Because we're a local control state, there's only so much we can do at the state level to influence mandatory policies in individual school districts. And so when we were actually deliberating, we had. three in the end, different bills that related to cell phones in front of us. By the time we were dealing with those in our committee, Scarborough had already, you had already started your policy, the middle school and high school. So I, and I actually love extended learning opportunities. So I'm so glad you guys get to do that, but I would love to hear from Abby, like, how is it going with the new cell phone policy? It's going much smoother than it was when it was first introduced this year. Everyone's gotten used to it

038by now. Also about the Honorary Page Program, it was shown to us. We have a great career program, Pathways Miss Avastnik, at our school. And I actually saw that on her Google Classroom. She posted about it at the end of last year. That's good. Yeah, that would be a good opportunity to share with Mr. Basnick, right, who runs the yellow program in high school. But we were really, we worked on the cell phone policy for eight months. It took us a long time and a lot of iterations and a lot of conversation, but we heard from... Lots of opportunity for feedback. Yes, I think we probably heard from, I would say, at least 30 students. Yeah, at least. Yeah, at least. Yeah, we have a very vocal... And Abby. email. Yeah. Yeah. They came, they

039came to our policy meetings. They came to our board meetings. Abby worked with, she was, she sat on our policy committee last year. And so she represented student views as well, but we received emails and they were really, really active. So I would presume that having an opportunity to testify would be widely well-received. Yeah. I mean, the topics that will get kids engaged. It's a variety of things and sometimes we aren't expecting and other times there's like 60 kids lined up to speak about something. We had one bill that actually we heard during April vacation this last spring about the Green Schools Network. We had 35 kids there to talk about, took a day out of their vacation to drive to Augusta and testify about it because climate change is very important too. students and

040as it should be, but for them to take that time and they all spoke very eloquently about what it meant to them and how they wanted to see change in their school and their community. So we love it. We, we ask more questions of kids when they come in, like adults can come all day. We're just like, okay, sure being here, but kids come up and we, it's like, we're interrogating them because we're so happy. Yeah. That's what we found too, right? Like we started our policy in one direction and we heard from so many kids. that it caused us to step, take a step back and reevaluate. We actually made changes based on what we heard from the kids. So they're immediately living whatever. Yes. Yes. And they have a very, you know, like

041I, I'd like to think I'm young, but it's been a few years since I was in high school. And so they bring a different perspective. Right. And so they some of the things that I don't like, I never would have thought about. that involve cell phones and the need for them and why it's important, right? We tend to think that kids are addicted and I certainly agree that there is addiction issues with phones, but there's other things like, what do I do when I go to work right after school? And what if they need me to come earlier, late? Or what do I do if, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, but Abby plays soccer on a travel team. And what if the location of practice changes? What if I have to

042pick up a younger sibling at school? You know, there's a lot of what ifs that are very practical, normal things and not just I want to touch base with my friend. Right. So I think I think what I learned, I think it's hard for us to remember because what our experience in school was like, well, very valid to our experiences is vastly different than what I think the children today are experiencing. And so I know like I know I still remember we had the poet Laurie of Portland, who was a student here in Scarborough, when she was explaining like her process to write poetry. She doesn't write it on any. She writes on her phone, just spoken word. And so she was like, you would, I wouldn't be able to work on my poetry at

043school without my device because, you know, people, and I think a lot of people were like, well, you could just type it out. And it was like, I'm not really sure we should be in. truity of people's artistic expression. Like how do you like, like I'm not sure I feel comfortable being like well you can use paper today. But there was and there were several art students talking about their art, the photography and the work they did that really depended on cell phones in a way that would never refer to me. I'm a millionaire so I'm not artistically inclined. I don't write poetry well. But I was like I'd never thought about it. So it was really, you know, we think about graphing calculators, like, of course, you use a cell phone for math. You

044can see that immediately. But I guess there was a lot of creative work that's being done. Science projects. Oh, yeah. Labs. Labs. Yeah. Experiment that they're doing that's really like a fast reaction and be able to get it on your phone because that camera is able to do it, is able to catch it in the timely. And then embed it in your lab report. Because when you submit lab reports today, they expect you to have. embedded graphics and so you can make your own graphic in the experiment and I was like what? Great. That's amazing. That's really cool. Well Mike gets it all graduated by the time you guys took up the cell phone policy but I definitely followed along and it's exactly what we would hope for local control is the process you all

045followed and the input you took and how it changed and morphed and fits. this community as you know and we can all look and see how other communities are doing it especially now Portland yeah is doing it that's going to be like a big pilot project right everyone can see is bell to bell the best way or is it just the best way for Portland um and you know not every district has a policy they probably have one generic like electronic device policy but not so much about cell phones and using school so um We have asked the main management, main state board of education to create model policies and best practice so that districts that don't have it can look to those surrounding communities to see what have you done, what works. and go

046from there because it is different I was in on the policy committee for a lot of years and we had a policy about electronic devices but you know when it was written it was probably about tape decks you know so yeah yeah very generic so having to specify even wearable devices and things like that which um obviously were not included in a lot of policies prior so yeah so well done with your policy thank you it's a lot of work I know that was a lot of work um Do we want to talk about the EPS formula, the funding formula? Yes, I always want to talk about it. I think that we have, I think you're absolutely right that Scarborough is very, we tend to think Scarborough is affluent. Everybody is affluent and it's a

047coastal town. It's, we have beautiful beaches and we have the marsh and we have a great education system. And all of those things are very true. What's also true is not everybody in Scarborough is wealthy and some are hanging on by their fingernails to their house. So we hear what ends up happening from our side is we end up asking for a lot and half the more than half the time those asks are mandated, legally mandated asks. But when you're somebody that is struggling to put food on the table, it doesn't matter if it's a legally mandated ask or if it's a want. It's still the bottom. At the end of the day, you're taking money out of my wallet. And it's it's very difficult. And to try to explain to people. that yes, we

048fund 55% of the educational budget. And that is a phenomenal thing. It's wonderful that we can do that, but that's not district by district to your point. So we only get 12% funding and it ends up being a very large ass every single year. And we have amazing teachers. We have amazing staff, Diane, I swear, like has match boxes and, and shoestrings and she can make magic happen. I don't know how, but we have been able to do quite a bit without asking for a lot more, but we do have legally mandated asks that are large. And so I would be, I'm interested in following this and I'm really interested in the indicator you mentioned, the relative income indicator, because housing prices and property prices don't tell the whole story. Yeah, absolutely. And that is

049one of the things that we heard from other legislators from their constituencies. And I know it from Scarborough and my time on the board. And I happen to be on the board for the many failed budget attempts. And so that was loud and clear that there are definitely, definitely people who are struggling. And that was, you know, many years ago. So I know it's gotten worse for a lot of people. We're hoping to, you know, like Drew said, it's still just moving the shells around for the state money because we have to have a balanced budget. So the commitment to 55% is important. It was a referendum question. So, but you're 100% right that it's the total cost of education for the whole state and then 55% of that. And, you know. there are winners

050and losers and so that's what we're trying to avoid with a shift too for the EPS formula we don't want to all of a sudden hit a community that before was getting a lot of state subsidy and their needs are not going to change and then change the formula and suddenly they're losers and fall right to the bottom where others may have gone up so it's it's a big balancing act yeah we are going to spend a lot of time talking So when you think in those terms, like, are you thinking about like a step down or a step up, like gradually, because those shifts could be pretty significant, right? Depending on how that formula changes. Yeah, I think that will be part of the conversation about how it could roll in. We also had

051a bill this year that somebody brought that wanted the state to pay for 100% of special education costs. And that is. an enormous number and something that is not possible for us to do right now. So and it's also, you know, we're hearing and dealing with cuts at the federal level that obviously are going to impact the state and it may trickle down to impact local districts. And so there are a lot of unknowns. And so. having all that in the background while we're trying to figure out our funding formula, it's difficult. And every time the EPS funding formula has been studied, you know, every couple of years, there's a new study, Drew can attest to it, and it comes up, not annually, but pretty close to it. And every time that there's been a

052significant study of it. the independent researchers come back and say, actually Maine's got a pretty fair system. And so, you know, then we're back to like, all right, I guess we're pretty fair, but this is the first time we're taking a really deep look with, with MEPRI and they're going to come back with hopefully some solutions for us to, to implement. Yeah, that works really well. Can I ask you a question? And I truly don't know the answer to this. Is there any consideration for the percentage of seniors or underserved seniors in a community that is wrapped up in that formula? So it's not part of the funding formula. It's really right now. the biggest proponent of it is just property values so if it's a senior whose house is worth a million dollars then

053that house is worth a million dollars um you know there are programs like circuit breaker programs and drew can talk more about that than i can but um there's nothing in the in the school funding formula eps is essential programs and services so there's nothing in that that would account for that and i you know maine's oldest state so we have obviously huge population and growing of seniors and people living on fixed retirement income. So yeah. So again, I mean, so when we talk about this issue, the funding formula is something that needs to continually be discussed and addressed. But then this other issue, you know, is also out there that's affecting all main communities, which is, you know, what's happened to property, you know, the fact of how we assess property and how we

054assess property taxes based upon property values that have just continued to skyrocket. And in some communities where the mix between the residential property and commercial property, you know, sort of goes in different directions, all of a sudden you see a shift in people who, you know. now live in homes that are assessed at a very high value, but that certainly wasn't the value of the homes when they bought them, even if it was 10 years ago, let alone 30, 40, 50 years ago. And, you know, we have constitutional issues in our state constitution about how we do property taxes that, you know, would need to be overcome to address a lot of those problems. So, I mean, I think these two issues are actually very... very interrelated. Yeah. Can you say more about the constitutional

055issues with the property? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I just think we have to, we have to assess our property and those as part of it. It's sort of a non-discriminatory way, right? So you can't, even when you talk about like, like, doing different assessments for people who have second homes in Maine. You know, I mean, you have limitations in the Constitution about your ability to draw those kinds of lines to say, I'm going to, you know, and the way we try to make up for that isn't through the assessment process, it's through things like the homestead exemption, where we give people something off the top, you know, if it's their primary home. you know, actually making that kind of differentiation in the assessment process, even between businesses and residences, has

056got challenges. That was the significant issue for South Portland because after the pandemic, all of the commercial property really declined, devalued, which shifted a lot of the tax burden to residential property. And if you split out that... equality that's mandated by the Constitution, you kind of risk that it will flip flop back and forth. And so you have to be really careful when you take away that baseline requirement of equal treatment. This is the struggle that, again, that some of the mill towns have had as the largest taxpayer. goes away, not only is the community dealing with the economic loss of the jobs, but also that all of the property tax burden is shifting from the business that was paying the taxes for a lot of the community to the taxpayers. And that's another part,

057too, that we need to factor in when we're talking about funding formulas, because Scarborough, Westbrook, Saco, South Portland, and Cape Elizabeth have relatively stable populations. But when you look at a town that the mill is closed and people move away, and so then they're taking their students away. And so we have some districts that have 70 kids in them, but we still have to provide a full education for those 70 kids. And often in rural districts where they're already on a bus for an hour. And so what's the solution? Do we consolidate? And then those kids are on a bus for an hour and 45 minutes. And, you know, some economy of scale, but what's it worth? You know, like it's, it's a reality is in rural Maine that we are facing. We have some

058very small districts and we have some that are consolidated. You know, we had that consolidation law that was required unless you had a certain tax base that could support your school to stay independent. And those, I call them divorces are still happening across the state. So. In other ways, there are some schools that are choosing to consolidate because economically they feel like they need to. But there is that loss of control that communities feel that Scarborough were to merge with Cape Elizabeth. There be a lot of feelings about that. You can imagine. And if you're a very small community, you feel even more like you're getting absorbed in your identity would be going away. So there's no easy way to look at it. Our student population statewide is. shrinking and I know that's not the

059case in Scarborough right now but but you know the whole state we are right we're very top heavy on the older end of the spectrum so yeah and it's difficult for seniors that are saying you know like I can't afford it and in better, nicer way, why do I have to pay for kids to go to school? And it's the social contract we all agree to, right? Somebody paid for you to go to school and now we have to keep paying it. And the costs are definitely more significant than they were. And that's just the reality that we have to figure out how to manage. Do you have ideas about the new revenue sources that could potentially be used? I have all kinds of ideas. Not embedded. Nothing specific to schools. I'd love to hear

060Kelly's ideas. So I just look at Massachusetts. And so we had a bill before us this year for a millionaire's tax, for example, that was not successful. Massachusetts does have it. And that is required. It can only go, I believe, to transportation infrastructure or schools. And so it's taxing incomes. above a million dollars. So a million dollars would be a regular tax rate. And then above that million, there'd be an additional percentage that would go for income tax. So that's one revenue source that they have. And they also have a one penny of sales tax that goes to their school construction fund. And so they're in a very different situation, even though their schools. you would imagine are similarly aged to Maine, they are able to build a lot more schools without relying on local

061property taxes because they have a very different setup, right? So there's not an, it's not that winners and losers expectation, right? Like that we have in Maine, there is a, like there's a local requirement that spreads the wealth. Right. In terms of the funds that are available. And they, I know previously were able to build entire schools, but even they are having to shift some because of the cost of schools. So they're now in some cases saying like, well, we'll pay 65% and the community has to pick up the other, which is a shift for them. But they're still in a much better situation. They have built an endowment for it and stuff. So those are just a couple of things, how other states are doing it. you know, we're, Diane and I were talking

062about earlier that New Mexico is now offering universal childcare and that's because they have oil subsidies. So, you know, we don't have, you know, so it doesn't, everything that works in other States is obviously not going to work here, but. Major revenue is primarily driven by income tax and state sales tax. So I think if you're looking for ways to significantly increase revenue for any purpose, those are the things that you need to look at within our structure. And for reasons I probably don't need to explain to folks, those are not easy things to accomplish and come to consensus on in the legislature. Any other thoughts on the funding? John, if you want to say anything, just unmute and call in any time. I think the construction, a lot of the same arguments hold true,

063the school construction. What's interesting is we, if you haven't been following, which totally fine if you haven't been following our process, but we did go to referendum two years ago for a consolidated school. It did fail. So we have been following Cape Elizabeth's process pretty closely as they've kind of, we've been kind of right neck and neck with each other. So when it failed, we created a building committee made up of community members. We invited people to participate. And the first iteration of it had 65 people that really dove into the data and the things that had been collected in the previous process. Well, one of the things they came into, information they came into was... modular modular buildings and um a group that was really vetting that that um product, was really interested in

064doing it for the school because the thought was you could build fast, you could build, you know, it's built somewhere else and brought in. And so really the work could be done over the summer is what the thought was. And so when they started this process, what became apparent really quickly is it's not something the state allows. And so the rub for a lot of people on the committee is that the state isn't paying anything, yet they're going to dictate the materials we can use. And so that became a pretty substantial part of the first iteration of this. So we've had that issue. And I think that there's I do know there's at least two members of the committee that are interested in talking more to you and to the office about it. I have

065given them your contact information, suggested they reach out because there's there's still a even though they know that Diane and followed the appropriate steps to ask for an exemption to talk to the DOE about why. they still are left unsatisfied with the outcome. So that I know is something that's on the top of mind for some. And then, of course, where we fall on the list is, and that list just keeps growing, right? So I don't suspect that the next time that this process starts that we might move some, but it's not enough to move the needle to get us a school. And so again, we're back to asking. you know, asking our residents to, for money. And yes, we have heard the, you know, I, I don't have kids in the system, so maybe

066I shouldn't be paying things, right. You know, I should be paying for this. And it's difficult. And what I, what I really struggle with is it becomes a butting of heads between our kids and our senior citizens. And that feels wildly unfair. You know, I don't like it for our senior citizens and I don't like it for our kids. I think, you know, they feel they want a senior center. They want a community. center a pool there's other things that they've been patiently waiting on but the school is the priority and so yes we all hope this is the time it passes and we can move on um and congratulations to you that you were able to get one passed and you're able to move on but um It's been an arduous process. It's been

067a long road. And even prior to this last referendum, I think this has been a topic of conversation for more than 10 years. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. For sure. Just here. Yeah. Yeah. So the middle school, which some still call the new middle school, which is not new by any stretch, you know, had those portables the day it opened because that was a state funded school and they were only able to look forward and back five years for population. estimates. And it was too small to date open those portables, obviously, you know, are still there. So when Wentworth came along, we tried to, we did apply and get on the list and we weren't even close to the top. And it doesn't matter if you're not in that top five, then you're not going anywhere.

068So I understand it a hundred percent because that was, it took 10 years as well to get community support for Wentworth. And eventually what worked was a, was a big 40 person building committee. And it was people from all over the community, several without kids in the schools. I hope this is the one, I hope this is the time. I mean, I feel like the process has been very in depth and the community has been following along and I hope this is the time. because you're right there are a lot of needs there's never been a pool in this town it's not like there was one in a close like we don't we don't have these things um but obviously you only get one shot at fourth grade and if you need a school to

069do it so um yeah i know i agree there's no there's no easy answer and especially when there are competing needs but But a matching program would be interesting, right? Because then I feel at least it's a little like on the surface, it feels a little more fair, right? Across the state. So you're not funding five projects. Perhaps you're able to fund 20 because you're giving a bit of, right? Yeah. So that perhaps for residents that might feel a little bit better. Like there's some help there. That's not just on, you know, the onus isn't on them all the time, but that the state's helping a little bit. or some relief for that service on it. Yeah. Yeah. There's an incentive for the community to take, you know, jump into the project because there's funding

070that's available that couldn't, maybe wouldn't be available in the future. Yeah. That blend of local commitment with state commitment. Right. Public radio when they have the matching hour. Yeah. But it makes it because. communities vary in their ability to pay for the project. That's correct. And we don't really take that into account right now. Yeah. And voter participation is different in a lot of communities too, you know, and participating in the building process and all of that, but then even just voting for the project, you know, very different, different places. Scarborough, we're lucky to have very good voter turnout, but. We're hopeful this year is. It's an interesting year. Yeah. You know, there's no federal. but there is a state ballot, right? So hopefully, we're hoping that'll drive some turnout as well. It's our seats

071that we have one school board seat and two council seats. They're all running unopposed. It feels like a little bit of a strange time. Get excited about the state referendums. Well, that's kind of what we're leaning on, right? To really drive. Try voters is people's passion about the two topics. So you must always have something really sexy on bad to help local. Yeah. Yeah. So. All right. So I think the other two things I heard the learning results is there. Do you have any more information to share that? Like what are the you said there might be a change and what we look at. Well, it's, you know, so main learning results, we don't mandate curriculum, right? So it's, there are topics in social studies, for example, you know, you have to cover the Civil

072War, but how you cover the Civil War is up to you and how much time you spend on it is up to you. So there's been, since I've been there, and I know years before, a request from legislators and constituents for financial literacy to be a mandated class for graduation. And so we hear from schools, we don't have room in our schedules for kids to take another mandated class. We don't have an instructor because for some reason, financial literacy lives in social studies and the learning results. And so then you're asking a social studies teacher to teach financial literacy, which is maybe out of their comfort zone. And then, you know, asking seniors to shift or typically it would be juniors or seniors taking it to shift their schedules and what they're looking for. in

073order to fit it in. So, but financial literacy can be accomplished right now. It's in the main learning results, but it can be accomplished with a half day credit union presentation, you know, that checks the box for financial literacy. So. Just taking the deal, we actually volunteered this to take a look at all of the different subjects in the learning results to say, like, what needs to shift? Where do we need to put some more emphasis, put more of those strands so districts can look at it and say, when they're looking for a social studies curriculum, we need to spend more time talking about, you know. these specific thing causes of the war to begin with and the reconstruction and things like that instead of maybe what's been a focus prior so again we're not

074mandating how you teach it it's what you teach and the emphasis on what because we've also had um there's been a law in the books for 20 years for expanded Wabanaki studies that have yet to come to fruition and it's for lack of funding, it's a lack of organization, it's a lack of a lot of things, a lack of the curricula to be offered to districts, frankly. And so that is something that needs to have more emphasis on it. We had another bill for African-American studies to be included and Asian-American studies also. So those are just another few things. There's also a study that's happening about, this might be on. the governor's desk already to look at the school day in general for school districts across the state. Because again, we're not mandating things. And

075so we also are not surveying districts to find out. Like who already mandates financial literacy, who mandates more than two years of high school math, because these are bills that people want to mandate extra years of math. And we're saying, well, let's see how many districts are already doing it and how big a jump would it be? There's the perennial one about teaching kids cursive because there is a misconception across the state that no one is teaching cursive. have the handwriting without tears workbooks in my house like districts are teaching cursive so um you know it's that kind of stuff it's um kind of nebulous because we don't mandate it we don't say from the state you have to teach cursive in fourth grade and this is the book you use and then we are

076just looking to see that everyone's doing it so um keeping within local control just trying to emphasize things more than they are now and to try to get some feedback from districts about what they are doing and how they're spending their day and school start times is a part of it. You know, it's like a whole, whole part because there's also one hearing we had that was very well attended, including on zoom was middle school wants recess. And so they wanted us to mandate that. And so some districts do it, some don't. we don't know how many so that was another one. They started moving break. Yes it's very popular. There is. We had I think all of Lincoln Middle School testify about it. They were very upset to lose it and they were they

077were trying it so. We moved our fifth graders into the middle school and the debate about yeah yeah built a whole bunch of playground equipment and yeah It's a big deal. It's a big deal. So anyway, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. Even in the high school, probably. It probably looks like I need to go to the bathroom 30 times a day. I'm pointing to Nate behind me. That's probably what it looks like in high school. All right. Any thoughts on the learning results? I'm excited to hear about the financial education. That's actually my background. Yes, I am a strong supporter of financial literacy and education and youth. I remember when I, my, when I was getting my master's degree, my internship was at a, my master's degrees in political or public policy.

078And my internship was with a financial literacy nonprofit. And at that time, checks were going out of. fashion. We weren't writing checks anymore, but it wasn't quite there. And kids were graduating without that understanding. But now it's, there's so much, you know, getting a credit card, what does that mean? What does that look like? I mean, I talked to our kids at the same age and I talked to mine all the time about the responsibility that comes with having a credit card and making payments on time and how that. you know, missing something can really impact you for quite a while. And that, that understanding, you know, we're, we're prepping our kids for so much to be good citizens when they graduate high school. And this is like the one piece I think we could

079add in. Well, if that be else. what we're asking 17 and 18 year old kids to sign on the dotted line for student loans yes and how that is going to impact them forever in their choice of where they live and how they live and what jobs they can take or not take and families and all of that so i i agree 100 it's critical and I always vote for it but local control yeah gets me every time so we do have a great adulting class at the high school that includes the financial literacy component that's really exciting it's not a requirement but it is it is a good I mean it teaches other things like a lot of practical skills that I think some of us are you know how to change oil yeah

080you know like things like that that we wouldn't right if I'm being honest I don't know how to change oil to this day but Yeah. But I can balance a checkbook and I can write a check. So I've got that part down. But it's a lot of good fundamental skills that I think as people are growing and learning and when they're out on their own, it's a good class to take as you're prepping. Yes. So we do have that. All right. Pre-K. What you got for us? What do we think? Is it coming? Is it not? Do we have a time? Okay, so the first step is right now, special services for three to five girls. That transition is happening for students with IEPs. That is the responsibility for FAPE, Green Appropriate Public Education, is

081shifting to school departments. And that has to, right now we have voluntary cohorts happening. The second cohort just started. So I think there are maybe 10 in the first cohort, 10 districts across the state. I think there's probably another 10 or 12 this time. And so that's like piece one, taking care of the kids that have requirements for special services through the school districts. And so for reference, Maine is the only state that already wasn't doing that. Every other state in the country. you require special services after age three, you're getting those services through your school department. So this is a long time coming for Maine to catch up to that. And CDS can still be your provider. There are going to be eight CDS hubs across the state. So if you don't... if your

082district doesn't have the capacity for it, you can tap into one of the CDS hubs to have access to physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, you know, whatever the student needs, you can tap into resources for CDS. So this portion is 100% paid by the state, this transition of CDS special services for three to five-year-olds. It's getting 100% covered by the state. What the rollout and why it's taking several years, and I think it's until 2028 districts have to take it on, is just. the capacity of a district to do it. Like, do you have the staff? Do you have the capabilities within your staff? Do you have a space for them? Are you going to rely on community partners for the space to house the kids? You know, just all these practical questions. So

083that's phase one and that's happening and that's, um, will take effect by 2028. Every district in Maine will have taken on. Yeah, we're working really closely with our other district partners through the greater Sebago Educational Alliance. So we're really trying to take a like a regional approach and you know we're a pretty tight cohort anyway of 12 districts. So we're trying to do some thinking together versus each of us trying to solve it in our own way. Yeah, it is certainly a challenge, right, as we think about the needs of those students, right? Because, like, we were pulling our sync numbers last week just to kind of get an idea of where we're at with three- and four-year-olds, and we're really talking about, like, 100 students, right? So we're not talking about, like, how do

084we figure out we've got 20 students over here who need something, right? Like, so we're talking about a pretty concentrated group of kiddos. Yeah. With varying needs. With varying needs, right? Like, you know, to meet a student who has an IEP for speech only is a relatively light lift, right? But when you're talking about students who have multiple service providers and multiple needs, that's, you're really talking about, like... full day programming. Right. Right. Very little students. So, and so three-year-olds, the possibility still exists even in districts that have taken it on is if you are a family that is happy with how your services are being provided to your three-year-old, whether that happens in their childcare facility or happens in home. that can stay. That's not, that option isn't being taken away from families. It's

085not like suddenly you have to put your three-year-old on a bus. In some districts, you might choose it and that is available to you, but you don't have to put your three-year-old on a bus to go to a place and receive their services and then be returned to you. So we are trying to take into account how services are. provided now and how families want to continue to get them because there are some families that never want their kid to go into a school building and they're planning to homeschool but these students still are legally um deserve our charge yeah yeah absolutely before it was child development services providing it child development services still included in this matrix, but it ultimately comes down to the districts who are responsible for providing it and maintaining the

086IEPs. One of the conundrums that we're trying to grapple with right now as a regional group is the reality that for many of our three and four-year-olds, they may be attending child care in other communities closer to where their parents work, right? And so what is... what's the lever on that right because you know is that indicating the need for a whole nother wave of superintendent like agreement yeah right where it's like oh your child is in daycare in portland and so you know it's highly unlikely that you're going to be able to get them to Scarborough for services. It's highly unlikely that we're going to be able to send transportation to your child or maybe a provider there. And so, you know, what is the ability for districts to help each other out in

087that way? Right. So Kittery was in the first cohort and they obviously have. parents that work in the shipyard from all over southern Maine and they have been doing some of those swaps you know like I'll take your four you take these two or whatever and they are just having it's a little bit easier because it's funded at a hundred percent right right so it's not like when you're making those agreements that you're taking on that local class in the same way that in the way that you do for superintendents right like because we've talked about that here recently. We had four bills about that in this session. Yes. I'm excited about that, quite honestly. But this is a little bit different because it is at 100%. I think the difficulty around that even being

088100% is there are some regions or pockets of places that are going to have a heavier burden if we look at it in those terms because they're going to be responsible for trying to find and hire those providers right like really easy for me to say oh you want your child to get those services in Portland that's great go ahead and do that but now Portland's on the lookout to find extra service providers right right so none of it is like easily solved. No. Right. There is a reason why CDS turned this over to school district. Right. Yeah. So I'm very glad the Sebago Alliance is built back up because it was very strong. I know. Yeah. No. That day to go. And it's kind of phased out and I'm glad it's a cohort now

089because that is important for this. Absolutely. And as you know, Maine has. for some reason, the highest identification rate for students with special needs. One in five students in Maine now qualify for special services. Well, I will tell you the last two years of kindergarten students that we have had, we've had them coming into kindergarten with 25% of the students with an IEP walking in the door. Yes. Right. And the state average for special education, you know, district, you know, if we look at district wide averages ever more around 16 percent. Right. So it really is indicative of a really growing need and greater needs coming in. more needs than prior classes ahead of them. So yeah, Charlotte could probably relate to that very well as a provider. You see it even more at her

090age now. Each year, the situation for kiddos with IEPs at like three, four, five, it's definitely changed a lot. And this is an all in a hope to eliminate the wait list, which I mean, there's... It's illegal to have a wait list for students that are legally owed special services. Then you owe them support services, right? So this is a step to try to alleviate that by making it more specific to the district where the kids will likely end up as kindergartners and going on. So fewer transitions, the better to have one. one group following them along with their IEPs and you know hopefully with more early intervention have kids graduate out of services and save money in the long run and be a better outcome for them. So that's all happening right now. So

091beyond that we've had the the pre-k study that happened statewide that was in the interim last year and there are recommendations from that group that have come out and many of them are no brainers. Like, yes, we need universal pre-K, things like that. But then we come down to how are we paying for universal pre-K? If not, we'll be all in the EPS funding formula. And so then we have, you know, districts that are winners and losers because sometimes student population. increasing those numbers really helps a district. The more students you have, the more money is coming in and the better it is for your whole district. Because once the money, as you know, is in a district, it can be shifted around and you don't have to always spend it necessarily on pre-K, even

092though that's new money that you're getting. So that's an ongoing conversation for us about how to do it and how to do it in a way that won't be very destructive to child care providers that already exist because as you know the three and four-year-olds are a higher ratio they cost less when you're sending a student your kid to child care when they're three and four than when they're infants and toddlers and so child care providers are using those different ratios to balance each other out you know the three and four-year-olds are paying for the higher ratios in the infant and toddler classes. So if we take away with by offering universal pre-K in public schools, taking those out of the child care system, then we're just leaving them with the more expensive students to

093educate and care for. And then. They have to ask parents for more money and parents are unable in 99% of cases to pay more. Already it costs more to send your student to childcare than it does to spend a freshman year at University of Maine. So it's, and there are no loans for, there's no plus loans. There's no staffer loans. There's nothing. So finding that balance where we're not decimating. child care businesses where we're not putting those employees out of work. We're not taking away access for affordable and accessible child care for families. Unintended consequences. So it's very delicate to try to figure out how to do it. And, you know, personally, I don't think child care should have to follow a profit and loss business model. I feel like that should be subsidized. bigger

094way than it is now. Do I just have all these bills? Yes, I have very expensive ideas. Anyway, so that's what we're trying to work through. And so again, that's going to be a big topic of conversation for us, whether or not we can get all the way to a bill this session. I don't know because we're trying to work it all out in a way that. It's not only beneficial for the kids receiving education, but for the families that have to pay for it and schools that need to fund it, find space in their buildings or partner with community providers. So there are just a lot of moving pieces that we're trying to figure out. And it's difficult because child care falls under the Department of Health and Human Services. So they have part

095of it. We have part of it. And so it's trying to coordinate all that and like braided funding elements to it. And some parts are required from federal government to only go through DHHS. And sometimes they do. So it's. It's a whole lot more. Yeah. There certainly is a lot, you know, I know we were talking about a little bit before the meeting started, Kelly, too, right? But in our assessment of, you know, what do districts around us have for pre-K, it seems as though districts who are higher state receivers definitely have much greater offerings of pre-K than districts like ourselves who are. you know, lesser receivers, right? Because obviously it's helpful when the state is paying, you know, a great share of those pre-K costs, right? But to be able to have to incur

096those costs at the local level, when you're talking about, you know, capping the size at 16 students and needing to have two adults full-time, it's... It really, you know, as we think about what universal pre-K would be here, we're talking about, you know. a million and a half, $2 million a year added to our budget. And no space to do it. Right. So when you look at some of those districts I was talking about that have a shrinking student population, they have empty classrooms all over the place. So they're not having to pay rent. Yeah. And if they're high receivers from the state, it's great. Right. And again, like, I think we would love to be able to offer that if it wasn't. so cost prohibitive, right? Like I think what we're constantly going back

097to is the burden that we're putting on that local taxpayer. Yeah. And, you know, in fairness to those communities that have a lower income and are receiving more state subsidy, that might be the only place where those kids can access pre-K. So. It's a whole thing that we're really trying to work out because obviously the need is there across the state. We obviously see all the benefits to it, but it's just trying to get from here to there without costing everybody a lot more money. Yeah, I think for it to be an unfunded mandate would be just decimated to many districts, not just Scarborough. Yeah, agreed. All right, we have like four minutes left. Do you want to go around the horn? Anything on your mind you want them to think about? I just have

098one more. Dawn? I have one, as we talked about, Diane mentioned, we've been talking about superintendent agreements and what that means for our district and what that looks like here. And one of the questions I've asked, and a couple of different ways, even though the answer never changes, I still have asked. Does the money follow? Why can't the money follow the student? Or why can't we charge tuition? So outside of superintendent agreements, you just want to charge tuition. If someone wants to come here. Yeah. Like if someone wanted to come here, the money doesn't follow. Right. So when they ask for a superintendent agreement, we're again asking the residents to pick up that. What is it? 80, 80. 88% of the cost of educating that one child. And we, the number we use is about

099$20,000 a year to educate a child. And so that's on top of my mind when I'm asking the residents for a school and then all the things I've already mentioned to you. And then I'm going to ask for this. I don't think the answer is zero. We've talked about that too. The answer is not zero superintendent agreements, but is there a way to make the money follow? So some dollars would follow, right? So, but not what is above and beyond what a local decides to spend. So I'm just making up towns, but say town X is a high receiver. They aren't paying any additional. property taxes per student, whatever they're getting most of their school funding from the state and then a community maybe like Scarborough that pays above and beyond for each student. Yeah,

100if Scarborough would take on 12, 15 superintendent agreements that's going to cost the taxpayers of Scarborough for sure. I think there are a lot of valid reasons why superintendent agreements are agreed upon. I mean, I think it's a high bar and it should be. We had a lot of bills this year trying to lower that standard and make it school choice. It's not essential. And that's a desired outcome for a lot of... families in the state they would like to be able to pick and choose for whatever reason whether they think it's a more desirable school or it's closer to where they were or whatever you know and there are valid reasons we talked about military students parents with students and they get moved around or they get deployed and then where is that student

101going to school and giving those families extra flexibility which makes sense yeah it's It's kind of just, I don't know. I don't have a good answer for why all the dollars don't follow, but it's because of that extra local investment that communities make. That wouldn't, like, the lower income school district isn't going to pony up an extra $8,000 for a superintendent agreement to send a kid. to Scarborough or whatever you know so that's what it is it's because there's that extra local spending piece that yeah yeah and we all have different rates of GPA right right so there's not apples and apples right there's all kinds of fruit I can keep hoping there will be an easy end to making this work out Well, thank you so much for coming. This has been really helpful,

102at least for, I think, for all of us here. And again, like we're really wanting to open the lines of communication and just be able to talk more and more often. So maybe we can do this again. Come back when it's a quieter time, you know, not when you're in the throes of session, but come back and we can talk through what's happening again. We love it. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Absolutely. Thank you for Kelly. And we'll have the chair of the school committee. And the other thing that I would add is if there are some things coming up that you think it would be helpful for a local weigh-in, you know, or testimony. Please reach out. We do Zoom testimony too. Yeah, please reach out to us. Yeah. That's one thing that has

103held over from COVID is that anyone is available, you know, you can submit electronically through an email or on Zoom, you can testify. So yeah, definitely reach out to us if you are wondering if something impacts us or you have thoughts about it. We're happy to. That'd be great. To talk about it. I'm your legislative liaison. So if you want to reach out to me, I would be happy to pass it along. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. All right. Agenda item 5.0 is adjournment. So if there are no objections, we'll adjourn at 7.02 for just five minutes. We take a regular meeting. Thank you. Good evening and welcome to the Scarborough Board of Education business meeting. The date is Thursday, October 16th, 2025. We're going to move on to agenda item 2.01 time. I

104will get this. It'll probably be the next meeting. Would everyone please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much. All right, Ray. Agenda item 3.0 is attendance. Would you mind calling attendance? Yes. Here. Mr. Kelleher. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here.

105Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. All right. Thank you so much. Agenda item 4.0 is approval of October 2nd, 2025 workshop and business meeting minutes. So with no objection, we will approve those as presented. All right. Agenda item 5.0 are adjustments to the agenda. I have one adjustment. We are going to table the staff spotlight award and move it to our next meeting, which is November 6th. Thank you. Are there any other adjustments? No, I have none. all right agenda item 7.0 is a presentation 7.1 um is special services so i'll turn it over to you and chris i presume yes Great. So for those of you who have been on the board

106with us, you probably recall that last year we started a monthly presentation by different departments and leaders in the district. And so this evening, we are excited to kick off those presentations for this school year with Chris Rohde, who is our director of special services here in Scarborough. So I will. hand it over to Chris. All right. Thank you, Diane. Thank you everybody for having me here tonight. And what I thought I would do is just focus on two or three different initiatives that we have going this year. I'm sure a little bit of that with you and we'll go from there. So one big piece of work that we're doing this year, and this is really a continuation of some work we've been doing over the last couple of years. You probably heard me

107talk about this a little bit last year as well. is expanding the scope of our evidence-based reading programs. And this year, we're really excited to be bringing on three new programs at three different levels. So one of our programs we're bringing on is a program called Read 180, and we're using that at the middle school in our resource rooms. And this is an intensive, you know, data-driven reading intervention. There's a structured, predictable rotation of teacher-led small groups, level text work. It's a really well-established program, and we're really excited to be bringing that on board for our middle school team. Right now, we have 33 students that are participating in that program, and we're working on decoding, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. And what we like about one of the many things we like about the

108program is it does have clear progress monitoring and goal setting, right? That's super important for our work and also for our kids to know, you know, where they're at with those skills. We did a lot of training to get this up and running this year. So we had two full days of in-person training with Read 180 trainers for program setup, classroom routines, modeling lessons. And then part of our package this year is we have an ongoing online coaching component called Coachly. And that provides for one-on-one coaching sessions for our staff as they're using the program throughout the year. So that's just that PD part of this is super important, right, to make sure that we not just have the program, but we're able to get the program up and running with fidelity, you know, as

109quickly as we can. So feedback has been really great so far, both from staff and students. So, yeah, we're really excited about that. And then also at the middle school, we're launching co-taught ELA classes this year at each grade level. It's the first time we've had them at each grade level. And so this is a little bit of a different approach. This is pairing a general education teacher and a special education teacher to work as equal partners around grade level instruction. And so. This is a way to get some of our students who are a little bit closer to grade level into a kind of a more inclusive general education setting. It's a great way to transition kids, hopefully, you know, back into a full general education setting when they're ready for that. So we

110have teachers working together to align standards, scaffolding text, tasks, flexible grouping. It's really a true partnership between the two teachers. So, and in addition to that, we're also doing some co-teaching in math and civics as well. So that's middle school at K2. We're bringing on a new program called Rave O. And we did some training about that this summer. We have one teacher at Pleasant Hill who's piloting it now. And we're looking to expand from there. And so this is just a nice alternative for us to have for kids who are working on their basic reading and their reading fluency programs. It's a newer program. Again, that's evidence-based and incorporates. a lot more, I think, kind of activities that are engaging for kids. So I think this is going to fill a nice slot for

111us there. And it also really focuses on orthographic processing, so not to get too deep into the weeds, but that is definitely an area of need in reading that we see a lot of. So we're excited to offer that. And then finally at Wentworth in our academic life skills program. We're going to be piloting this year a program called Early Reading Skills Builder. And this is a program that's specifically designed for students with moderate to severe intellectual disabilities. So some of our traditional evidence-based reading programs are not always a great match for kids in those programs. And so this is going to be something a little bit different. It is, again, highly structured, evidence-based program. It incorporates things though like errorless, if I can say that word, errorless learning, prompt fading data tracking. There's some

112principles that we kind of associate more maybe with academic or functional life skills programming kind of built into this. A lot of repetition of skills and kind of circling back. visual supports, auditory supports as well. So I think this is going to be a great addition to what we have right now for reading programs. And so just to kind of sum that up. Right now, we have, I tried to do a little list of what reading programs we have. So we're using a program called Spire, Sound Sensible, Revo, Wilson Reading, Orton Gillingham, the early reading piece I just talked about, Read 180, another program called Rewards, another program called Read Naturally, and also the Linda Mood Bell suite of programs. So that, I think, speaks to the... kind of the depth and breadth of the

113experience and training that our staff has and it also speaks to the um the depth and breadth of the complexities around teaching reading to kids we know we need to have those different programs for different learners so so really excited to have all that work going on this year um also in the Professional development vein. This is a continuation of some work that we did last year, but we're doing expanding our training for our special education staff around practices and strategies to help kids with self-regulation, right? And last year we worked with Dr. Rebecca Bickford. She's a clinical psychologist in BCBA that did some training for our K-2 programs last year. And this year we've expanded that training K through eight for all staff in our social life skills programs. And so Dr. Bigford is

114going to focus in this training on trauma informed practices for education, evidence based practices for helping kids learn self-regulation strategies. And that work is really a lot about training staff. to know the right language to use in the right situation, the right tone of voice, how often you do that, how you track that data. It sounds like common sense on a lot of levels, but to really do that work well requires a lot of attention to detail and a lot of training. So we're really excited to have Dr. Bickford working with all of our K-8 social life skills program staff this year. We're also excited about the consistency that that's going to bring to programs. We have two social life skills programs at our K-2 level. So both of those buildings are working with the

115same language, the same program. And now as kids move through the different phases, they'll have that consistency. So we're really excited about that work. And we have approximately 45 staff that will be participating in that training this year. So that's really good. And in addition to that, Dr. Brickford is also going to be doing. some individual consult with each of the social life skills programs as well so they can talk about kind of applying those general concepts to specific students in specific situations as we go through the year. Okay, so one other piece that I wanted to talk about tonight is We have expanded our K-2 functional life skills programs this year. So this year is the first year that we've been able to offer a functional life skills program in each of our K-2

116primary schools, meaning that kids can now have the option to go to their home school. And this was something that came about, I think, because of the number of kids we have that require that programming and our space needs. But it's been... just nice to be able to offer that option to families because that's the option other families get, right? You go to your home school. So that's been a nice benefit of this for us. It's been a great experience, I think, for the Pleasant Hill School. They really enjoyed having that program. They really embraced that program and the kids in that program. So that's been really cool to see. And then kind of associated with our functional life skills program, one other thing I wanted to highlight is something we're doing this year called,

117and we've done before too, but Word of the Week. So this is kind of cool. This is a program that our speech therapists and functional life skills teachers. put together. So the word of the week is basically a word for a week. And it's a teaching strategy focusing on like one core word. And what we're thinking about doing or hoping to do with this is a couple of different things, right? So we're working with kids who have really, you know, basic communication skills, a lot of needs around communication. And this is a way to model and practice the use of vocabulary, but also a great way to increase inclusion because the word is kind of posted all through the school and it gives kids who are not in the functionalized skills program a chance to

118come in and interact with kids. So basically there's posters of the visual sequences for kids to access and on their augmented communication devices. The word of the week is announced during morning announcements. Activities and books are used to focus on the concept throughout the week. So yeah, so that's just a great piece of work that our team does to kind of bring kids together at the K-2 level. And then one last thing before I wrap up. This summer, we launched an extended school year program. for some high school students in our social life skills program. And, you know, one of the challenges for sure that we see more and more are kids that really struggle with school avoidance and getting kids to school. And our high school social life skills team does a phenomenal job

119of relationship building with kids. And that's such a big part of the puzzle and getting kids to feel comfortable coming into school and engage in work. And so this year we piloted a program for, I think, I forgot to write the number down here. I think we had five or six kids come in and these are kids that have really struggled with school attendance in the past. And it just worked out great. We had a couple of staff members from the program offered to come in and work this summer. And all five or six of the kids that we have identified came in and participated regularly. And then we saw like a real increase in attendance this fall. So that was great. You don't always see the cause and effect, I think, so clearly, right,

120when you try something new. But we're really excited about that and we're looking forward to doing that again. next year. So that was just a few things. Appreciate all the support from the community and from you as a board as well. And I suppose from Diane and Ray too. But all kidding aside, just feel very fortunate to be doing the work here in Scarborough and all the resources that our teams have to do this work. We're kind of uniquely blessed in that regard. And just really excited to see all the great work that's happening with that. That's my presentation for tonight. Thank you so much, Chris. Are there any questions or comments for Chris? Would you mind just for anybody who's watching, if they ask, what is Functional Life Skills? What does that entail? So

121Functional Life Skills is a program for students who are... Kind of working probably on like our most kind of basic communication skills. We might be working on some self-care skills at younger ages. There might be really thinking about kind of pre-academic skills, you know, getting adjusted and getting used to being in a school setting and being around other kids. A big emphasis on just, yeah, again, like socializing with other kids. How can we get kids to a point of doing that? And then as those programs, the kids kind of age and they stay in those programs, as we get closer to middle school and high school, we start thinking more about community involvement and community experiences, some pre-vocational experiences. So the focus becomes really a lot more around preparing them for what they'll do and

122experience as adults. So, yeah. Thank you. Sure. All right. Any other questions or comments? I can't see. Thank you so much. All right. It was wonderful. Thank you for the time. Yep. All right. Agenda item 8.0 is this solution referendum update. Jillian, do you want to do this one? Just our normal update. I think it's really pretty much the same stuff. The committee is still actively pursuing the... information only campaign to educate the community as to what's happening on the ballot, what's on the ballot, information about the need in our district and why these, why now, why the school now. So those informational sessions continue. This week, we had a community meeting at Eight Corners, but along with a tour of the school. There was a presentation at the senior lunch at the community center

123hub that the committee attended. in a residential community. There was a meeting there as well that they attended. There's been a lot of work on the website, on the frequently asked questions. As we've been out in the community and have heard questions, we kind of vet them through the committee and go ahead and put them up. For example, a couple of the big ones we've heard lately is the playground sizes at the school. There was a thought that the playgrounds were going to shrink in size or be reduced. And so we were able to go back to the architect and verify that, no, in fact, they're not decreasing in size. What is happening in some of the schools, they are moving, but the size is the same. So things like that, as they come up

124at meetings, we're adding to. I feel like there was one more that was a good one. It'll probably come to me tonight. So we're still actively working on that. We're in early voting right now. So again, the campaign just continues to be informational only. On another note with the school solution referendum. I'm going to add in a piece in here. I generally don't do this, but this one feels a little bit different. There was some social media posts in regard to the school board participating in activity that would influence the outcome of the election, very specifically talking about a sign that was posted in town hall. And while I don't usually do this, I was disappointed to read that because I know that five out of the six of you had no bearing on that.

125That was something I had discussed with the communications committee and not in a nefarious way. My idea and thought was we see so many residents in town hall paying their tax bills and buying their boat passes and buying their dog licensing fees and all of the things that they do while they visit town hall, that it was a good opportunity for us to. put a poster up that would educate them. And again, the idea here is that the community feels confident in this decision when they go to the ballot box that they are fully informed about the project. And that poster has been up. Gosh, like for months now in town hall. The implications that this board was involved in anything nefarious is what's really disappointing to me because this was my idea. I did

126post the poster and I'm sorry that the outcome is what it is. The poster has been removed. So it is not in town hall anymore, but I am sorry for the implication to anybody on this board that. anything untoward was happening. That was not the intent of me. That was not the intent of the communications committee. And I most certainly know that's not the intent of anybody up here. So, all right. Any questions or thoughts on that update? Yeah, I have some thoughts. Sure. I have some thoughts. Our job as members of the Scarborough... is to oversee the education of our community. And I think we take that job really seriously. And so the materials that were put out, which are absolutely appropriate and completely legal, educate voters about what they're voting on. We don't

127care how people vote. I mean, we all have our opinions, but at the end of the day, our goal is not to tell people what to do. It's to make sure that we make informed decisions. So I would have absolutely supported putting that poster up where it has been for months. and keeping it up where it has been for months, because it is a part of an educational campaign, which is what our goal is. And I won't be dissuaded from that by anybody, no matter what they think or what they say about me or anyone up here. So I don't think you have anything to apologize for. I think removing that poster was wrong. I think it should stay up. I think people have a right to know. why we're asking for that amount of

128money and where that amount of money is going, which is the only information that is contained on that poster. It does not tell people one way or the other what to do with that information. But at least when they vote on a very large amount of money, more money than most people are ever going to see in their lives as an individual, I certainly am never going to have $140 million. We'll know what that represents and why we're asking for that amount of money. So to think that that was inappropriate is just flat out wrong. Any other? I don't see John. Okay. All right. Agenda item 9.0 is general public comment. Is there anyone wishing to make general public comment this evening? All right. Seeing none, we will close general public comment. Agenda item 10.0

129is continuing business. 10.1 is a second reading of policy BEDH public comment at school board meetings. Do you want to tee this up? We have to go to vote for it. This was going to be presented for second reading. I'm going to make a motion to table it. We've had some additional information and questions come up that require research and some consultation. The policy committee is not going to meet until November 2nd, and I don't think we should present this for second reading until we've had an opportunity to review it and the questions that have been raised as a community. All right. So let's make a motion. Does someone? Yeah, I motioned to table it until the committee has had a chance to review it and bring it forward again. Second. All right. Oh, we

130got to call the vote. Can we call the vote? Ms. Jacobs. Yes. Mr. Kelleher. Yes. Ms. Lundstrom. Yes. Mr. Rockensteier. Yes. Ms. Tarpenian. Yes. Mr. Paney-Huff. Yes. Ms. Ruskina. Yes. All right. Thank you. The motion carries. All right. Agenda item 11.0 is new business. So I think what I'll do, the ones that require no action, I'll bundle and let you talk to both. Is that, that sure is okay. Okay. So we're going to bundle 11.1.1, which is Chris Murphy, assistant principal from Scarborough middle school to Scarborough high school, interim assistant principal for remainder of the 2025, 2026 school year. Remainder of 2025-2026. 11.1.2, Ethan McGill, Scarborough Middle School Resource Room Teacher to Interim School Support Lead for remainder of 2025-2026. These are non-action items, but I'm going to turn over to Diane to speak to

131these. Great. Thank you, Shannon. Again, these are transfers that require no action on the board's part. As you are aware, as a board, Our school year got off to a very unexpected start with the passing of Mr. Brown. And our high school team has been working very diligently. Kudos and kudos and kudos to Mr. Terrio, who's here in the room tonight, to Sarah Blaisdell, our other assistant principal, and to Mike Lagage. I think collectively they worked really hard in the month since that has happened to try to hold the fort down at the high school, knowing that we needed to find a solution that would assist us as we continue in the school year. And so this evening, I am happy to share with you the different pieces of that plan. that have now come

132together, starting with Chris Murphy. So Chris Murphy, as many of you know, currently has served as our middle school assistant principal. And he is accepting a transfer to the high school for the remainder of the school year. This makes sense on so many levels. First off, For those of you who don't know, Chris came to us in to Scarborough with extensive experience working with students across grade levels. He has served as head of school and principal for K2. K through 12 institutions in the Philippines, in South Korea, as well as in Maine. He did that work for over 10 years. Prior to that, he was also a special education teacher. He knows. all of our freshmen and all of our sophomores. And so from a student standpoint, this is just a real asset to the

133high school team at a time where they really need that. They need someone who can just be plug and play, who knows kids, who knows Scarborough, who knows our policies. And I just can't thank Chris enough for stepping up and taking that role on for us for the remainder of the year. Related to that, the other transfer that requires no action on your part is for Ethan McGill. Ethan has currently served as resource room teacher at Scarborough Middle School. Previous to that, Ethan... actually filled this student support lead role. And prior to that, he also was a special education teacher in another district in a behavior program. And so again, here, it makes perfect sense for Ethan to slide back into a role that he has previously filled at Scarborough Middle School for us for

134the remainder of the year. So I would just let you know about those two things that are just transfers and information. Happy to entertain any questions if you have them. Any questions for Diane? Just thank you to you and your team for all the hard work and dedication you have in making this seamless for the students. Yeah, I would echo that both with Chris and Ethan and then Jennifer, who we'll talk about in just a moment. I think the real care that was given to not only our students and the disruption that this caused for them emotionally and in school, but also to our staff and our principals. And so that they have someone coming in that they already know that's meaningful to them as well. So thank you for. thank you both of you

135and ethan for taking these positions i think it's um this has been a really well thought out plan and i appreciate all that you both have done to do this so thank you any other questions or thoughts All right, 11.2, our appointments, 11.2.1 is Jennifer Landez to interim assistant principal at Scarborough Middle School for a remainder of the 2025-2026 school year. Yeah, so related to the conversation that we've just been having, I'm really excited this evening to introduce you to Jen Landez, who many of you probably have not met. previously. Jen has served in the capacity of student support lead with us since coming to Scarborough Middle School. Jen has agreed to step into Chris Murphy's role as interim assistant principal for the remainder of the school year. Again, here, I just can't say enough.

136Jen came to us in school. came to Scarborough with some really great experience. She had spent over 10 years as a counselor at a middle school in a nearby district. She had also spent some time as an SEL coach and also as an assistant principal. And so again, as we were thinking about the big picture and the big plan, Jen was just a real natural fit. She was a close member of the team working with Kathy and Chris on a regular basis. And so the work that she's going to be undertaking is not that. out of the scope of what she has been currently doing. She knows all of our students. She has strong connections with our teachers and our teams. And again, I just can't express my thanks enough to the entire middle school.

137I understand that, you know, they are being real givers in this situation. They're recognizing that there is a larger need in the district. But this is what we do when we come together and we say that we're a community and that we're a family. And so I really just can't think. Jen and also Kathy enough because I understand for Kathy that this is a little bit of shift and an unexpected change for her as well as she thinks about her school team. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Do I have a motion to approve Jennifer Landez to interim assistant principal at Scarborough Middle School for the remainder of 2025 and 2026? So moved. Second. Is there any discussion? Ms. Jacobs? Yes. Bellerher? Yes. Lindstrom? Yes. Mr. Rockensteier? Yes. Ms. Tarpenian? Yes. Ms. Terpenie-Huff? Yes. Ms. Roskina? Yes.

138Perfect. That shows unanimous. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations to both of you. And thank you, Kathy. I'm remiss to not have thanked you earlier. Thank you for all of your support and your flexibility as well. All right. 11.2.2 Oak Hill Players Director. Yes, so we had tabled two positions last month because we had a couple of unexpected resignations after Oak Hill players had started for the season. And so I am pleased to let you know this evening that in your packets, you'll see that we've been successful in hiring a director as well as the music director. And the show goes on. All right. I think what I'm going to do is bundle 11.2.2 and 11.2.3, Oak Hill Players Director and Oak Hill Player Musical Director. Do I have a motion to approve the positions as presented?

139So moved. Second. Any discussion? I just would say once again, thank you very much. And please thank Mike and Nate. This has been, I know this was unexpected and a lot of people, but again, the student-centered nature of our district meant that this was really fourth and first and foremost. I can't speak either, Chris, on his mind. And I really appreciate the speed with which this has come together and that the show is able to still go on. Yeah, I just want to echo that. I think my thanks to Mr. LeGage. He went above and beyond as well as everybody around him. But I know we heard a general outcry with the idea that we wouldn't have Oak Hill players this year, which seems like an impossibility given how important it is to our community.

140And the fact that he was able to respond in the midst of a really difficult time period so quickly to turn this around is truly incredible. Yeah, I agree. And just so I don't forget, maybe we can invite them back to sing for us this year. So I'm sure we maybe put that on schedule for after they're done with their music. We're planning lots of other monthly activities. Yes. We'll add that in. We'll add that in. Wonderful. Any other discussion or questions? Can we call the vote, please? Yes. Ms. Jacobs. Yes. Mr. Kelleher. Yes. Ms. Lindstrom? Yes. Mr. Rockenstein? Yes. Mr. Arpinian? Yes. Mr. Pennyhoff? Yes. Mr. Skeena? Yes. Thank you. That shows unanimous. All right. Agenda item 12.0 is executive session. 12.1 is a motion to enter into executive session pursuant to 1 MRSA

1414056A for the purpose of discussing the educational support professionals contract to return to public session. Do I have a motion? So moved. Second. Any discussion? Can we call the vote, please? Yes. Mrs. Jacobs? Yes. Mr. Kelleher? Yes. Ms. Lindstrom? Yes. Mr. Rockenstein? Yes. Ms. Tarpenian? Yes. Ms. Trapini-Hutt? Yes. Ms. Ruskina? Yes. All right. Thank you so much. That shows you that us will return.